October 17, 2004

.LRN ('DOT-LEARN') CONSORTIUM FORMED
Several universities (including MIT, Heidelberg University, and the
University of Sydney) have gotten together and announced the formation
of the .LRN Consortium, which is dedicated to the development of open
source educational software. More information is available at
http://dotlrn.org/
Just to be clear: this seems to be a consortium to support and promote
a particular suite of open source educational software:
".LRN is an open source application suite
for learning and research communities."

I woke up late. Meep. It’s my fault Ranulf didn’t get to go to the
sword museum or the flea market, but I think he enjoyed himself
nonetheless. We went shopping with Asami, Tomoko and Moon Ki in
Harajuku and Akihabara. Ranulf buy a kimono, a fan, and a few other
souvenir items.

After seeing how useful cellphones were in coordinating everything, I
decided to get one as well. It was a good thing Asami and Tomoko came
along. They helped me find a simple prepaid phone. =) The cheapest
model wasn’t in stock, but the second-cheapest one was still okay. I’m
learning to think of things in terms of my daily living allowance
instead of in terms of Philippine pesos.

On the way back, Ranulf and I ran into a poi/staff/fan/drums group
practicing in Yoyogi Park. Apparently, they practice there every third
Sunday. Wow! I was so lucky to catch them. Seeing them, I decided to
get the staff back from Ranulf so that I can really learn how to use
it. <grin> They’re amazing! They execute complicated moves so
gracefully… I definitely have to practice so that I can make the
most of those sessions. I’m looking forward to the next one!

Side note: I am not remembering actually any URLs of these
blogs, all I do is just fire up Google and then type in the keyword
i.e. sacha wiki, theSpoke punzki, theSpoke Stanley, theSpoke Howard.

This brings me to a realization that “keywords” are important in
managing information. Should there be a tool that manage keywords
that manages information then that would be very useful.

URLs are rarely human-friendly. They require memorization. Keywords,
on the other hand, are personally meaningful and much easier to
remember.

I think of my brain as an index more than a database. <grin> I
don’t have to remember everything, as long as I have a general idea of
what’s out there and where to find more information. (I wonder if this
preference is related to the general learner / specific learner.)
Advantages: I can occasionally pull odd-but-useful information out of
my head, and I’m good at searching for information. Disadvantages:
When external data disappears, I’m stuck with vague handwaving and
whatever’s in my head. ;)

By the way, if you’re looking for something to help you meta-tag the
Net, I recommend del.icio.us. It’s fun to use
keywords to categorize sites, and it’s even more fun to check out what
other people have filed in interesting categories.